


Behind Enemy Lines

by Sholio



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: Blood Loss, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-02-27 12:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18739327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Pollard and Dekker are trapped on a Union-controlled space station during the war.





	Behind Enemy Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



"Well, this is fun," Ben gritted out.

"Shhh," Dekker hissed. 

They were crouched on a high catwalk, looking down on what had been this station's version of helldeck once. Typical dockside for an older ring station: bars, sleeperies, shops catering to the spacer crowd. Rundown even before the war got done with it, now it was an empty, echoing wasteland, all bare scarred metal and damaged businesses. Scattered groups of Union soldiers went about their business, azi for the most part, moving silently and eerily in sync. There were prisoners too, stationers in huddled groups. Dek tried not to look at them, tried even harder not to think about them. There was nothing that could be done for them, at least nothing he and Ben could do.

It was cold on the dockside. Bitter cold. Their breath curled like steam. Flight suits, even having lost the helmets and gloves, provided a little more protection against the cold than crew coveralls would have. But they weren't designed to stand up to the bitter chill of a dockside that had been partially exposed to space not too long ago, where half the heaters weren't working anyway. Dek's fingers were going numb, gripped on Ben's arm. Ben had needed the support getting up here, but now Dek just kept hanging on, and he wasn't even sure why. Just seemed like getting separated was the worse of the two possible options, what with the dockside crawling with the enemy and all.

"We need to find a way to the other side of the ring," Dekker whispered, trying not to think about all those door seals, all those armed men and women between here and there. 

"What's the point? Bet you a gallon of Mitch's homebrewed finest that _Norway's_ already pulled out."

"They won't leave without --"

"Bullshit," Ben retorted, through chattering teeth. "The ship's what matters. Two rider jocks, not so much. They'll write us off if they have to, for the ship's sake. That's how the equations run. It's all about the numbers, Dek-boy. It always has been."

He wasn't wrong; other ships had lost riders, hell, most of them had. And sometimes ships had to pull out and leave riders behind. It happened. Had to happen. If it was that or lose the whole ship ...

But you always wanted to believe yours was different. Wanted to believe your captain wouldn't do that. You almost had to. Otherwise you started asking yourself what was the good of it, what did it matter to be _Norway_ crew, and not Union ...

Not good thoughts to be having while stranded on a Union-controlled station.

Dekker glanced at Ben. It was dim up here between the girders and gantries supporting the ringdock's ceiling, so reading nuances of expression was hard, but he could see even in the twilight how white Ben's face was, a shockingly pale blur in the dark. Blood dripped off Ben's fingertips onto the metal platform they were crouching on -- not from the arm Dekker was holding onto, but the other one, hanging limp at Ben's side. The flight suit had sealed automatically, probably the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.

Dekker flexed his fingers, sticky with Ben's blood. "Let me look at that."

"Not here," Ben said. "No time. Gonna look up any minute ... hell ..."

He lost his balance, would've gone down on his face if not for Dekker's grip on his good arm. Ben's entire sleeve was soaked with blood, glossy black in the dim light.

That blood would leave a trail, Dekker thought. He wasn't used to thinking in those terms. Tracking in deep space was vectors and jump points, not tracks and drops of blood. _What the hell, it's like we're hiding in some forest in a vid set on Earth. Something out of the past._ He had to choke down a laugh, not just because the Union soldiers might hear (azi might not care, but it wasn't all azi down there), but because he had a feeling that if he started, he might not be able to stop.

And blood had a smell, even in the cold: a sharp coppery taint on the tongue. It smelled chemical, like something that belonged in a ship's tanks rather than a human body. Dekker had all but forgotten that smell, and now it brought everything back from years ago: Bird drifting ragdoll-limp in the lift, Meg going off the line like she'd been kicked and that frozen moment of shock when he saw the floating red drops -- 

Hard shove at him, a nudge from Ben's shoulder, not friendly; it made him slide sideways on the catwalk, having to catch himself hastily so his boot didn't slam into the railing and give them away.

"Hey. You woolgathering again, Moonbeam?" Sick and shaky as Ben looked, he also looked pissed. "You check out on me in the middle of _this,_ so help me, I will push you off the --"

"I'm thinking," Dekker said. "Shut up and let me think." Meg, he reminded himself, was safe on _Norway;_ at least she should be, by now. Sal too. He looked up at the ceiling, close above them. Vents all over the place. Access corridors. The question was which ones were locked down, which ones were exposed to vacuum, which ones might be crawling with Union troops ...

"Yeah? Why pick now to break a lifelong habit of jumping into things without thinking them through?"

"Shhh."

\-- and why even _bother_ , was the other question. If _Norway_ had pulled out without them, which it most likely had, it wasn't coming back. All they could do was buy themselves a day or two before Union got them, if cold and (in Ben's case) blood loss didn't do them in first.

But he hadn't survived everything he'd survived just to go down without a fight. There had to be a way to get back to their ship. And in the short term, find somewhere to hole up and plan, where they weren't in constant danger of discovery. Or at least not quite so much.

"C'mon," he whispered, and tugged on Ben's arm. "Got an idea."

"I feel safer already," Ben muttered, but came without further complaining, which was a worse sign than all the rest of it put together.

 

*

 

They shouldn't have been on the station, let alone in the thick of the fighting, Ben thought muzzily, stumbling along with Dekker pulling at him, getting him moving every time he wanted to stop. He was a numbers man, dammit. He'd flunked every aptitude test to do with guns back in UDC basic, on goddamn _purpose_ \-- had got himself an unarmed waiver, probably couldn't hit the broad side of a station wall if you put a gun in his hands right now. Or ... hand. Since there was only one that worked, just at the moment.

"Ben, come on, not much farther now ..."

His arm really _hurt,_ a dull sick throbbing. And he didn't want to _be_ here. He'd about come to terms with getting shot at in a ridership -- it was all equations and green lines in the dark anyway. You could almost forget those green lines were real ships, real missiles. But there was no rationalizing _this_ away, the pain and the cold and the fact that real people had been pointing real guns at him. At them. Real people who would kill them really, really dead if they caught them.

Or worse, wouldn't kill them. The stories he'd heard, about what Union could do to captives with their tape-tech and deep conditioning techniques, would turn your hair white ...

"Ben," Dekker whispered, and he realized two things. One, they weren't walking any more. Two, he was pretty sure it wasn't the first time Dekker had said his name. 

He was getting as spacey as Captain Space Cadet here. That scared the shit out of him.

"Ben!" Dekker sounded scared. Well, Ben thought, that makes two of us.

"Yeah, what?" he wanted to know, and Dekker let out a breath and then got a grip on Ben's flight suit and lowered him onto something rough but yielding. A pile of sacks, maybe? He had no idea where they were. Dull emergency lighting flickered in the gloom, giving him the impression they were behind something large -- tanks, maybe. The smell in the air was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't make sense of any of it.

"Where _are_ we?"

"Back behind the hydroponics," Dekker whispered. "I figured it'd be warmer here, and lots of places to hide."

"Until Union gets around to looting the station's food supplies."

"It's already pretty well stripped. Anyway, there's nothing back here but the sludge tanks."

Well, that explained the smell. Flashbacks to childhood work shifts at the Institute, forging good little corporate citizens through the value of hard work and teamwork and all that effing crap ... Literally, in the case of the sludge tanks.

"Stay here," Dekker whispered, squeezing his shoulder, and Ben wanted to ask where the hell Dekker thought he was going to _go,_ but talking felt like too much effort. Instead he stared up at the tanks, visible from this angle as shadowy pillars of curving metal and plastic. He remembered being twelve years old, scrubbing out tanks just like those with a gang of fellow twelve-year-olds, and being incandescently _furious_ at his dead mother, for reasons that were only a little more clear to him now, looking back on it ...

"-- and this," Dekker was saying, crouching beside him, and Ben realized he didn't know how long Dekker had been gone, or where he'd been gone, or what the rest of that sentence had been.

What he did know was that Dekker was helping him sit up and wrapping him in a ratty work coat that smelled strongly enough of the sludge tanks that he was able to smell it over the stink of the rest of the place. Dekker also had found a small penlight somewhere and was now gripping it in his teeth, a white-bright flash when he turned his head.

"Careful with that thing," Ben said through chattering teeth. "Give us away."

Dekker said something indistinct around the penlight, then took it out of his mouth so he could say, "There's nobody around. Let me see your arm."

This produced a fresh wave of shivering, because he'd just about been managing not to think about it. Bird, god ... he'd _seen_ how fast you could go out from shock and blood loss. "I'm good, thanks."

"Ben, let me look at your fucking arm."

"You a med now?" Ben wanted to know, but then whatever Dekker did to his arm _hurt,_ fuck, it hurt; the resulting head rush blacked his vision and he came back to himself slowly, propped against the wall while Dekker did unpleasant things to his arm with strips of fabric torn off the lining of their flight suits.

Shivering with cold and blood loss, Ben gazed blankly up at him. Dekker had the penlight gripped in his teeth again, his face intent and serious in the harsh, unflattering light; it made every one of the fine lines in his face stand out. Dekker wasn't really a kid anymore, to the extent that he'd ever been, and it was always startling to see that, to realize they'd already given years of their lives to a war in which they owed nothing to either side, a war they'd never intended to fight in.

Alone, without Ben's deadweight in tow, Dekker might have half a chance of getting to the other side of the station, meet _Norway_ before it pulled out, if there was even a chance it hadn't already --

"Ben?"

Time had jumped again. Dekker had the penlight in one hand again, and was peering at him intently.

Ben grunted a kind of acknowledgement. _Go,_ he wanted to say, but saying it was too much effort. And anyway, he really, truly did not want to die here.

"Move your fingers," Dekker said. "If you can. I just wanna know if blood's getting to them."

There was light pressure on Ben's hand. Dekker's skin felt warm. Slowly, painfully, Ben curled all his fingers but the middle one. 

Dekker grinned and squeezed his hand. "Good job. Listen, Ben. We gotta get in touch with _Norway._ Any ideas?"

Ben tried to think. His brain didn't want to work; it was like forcing coherent thoughts through the sludge in the tanks. They didn't have their flight helmets, which meant no suit comms. Comms, that's what they needeed ... but Union would have the main communication centers locked down or destroyed ...

"I know," Dekker said, which was what made Ben realize he'd been talking out loud, which was also extremely worrying. "But there's lines back here in the maintenance accesses, right? Relays? It's not just wireless, it's phone and relays, right? Like back on Sol Station and R2."

Yeah. Yeah, that might work.

"If I find one -- Ben -- Ben, pay attention -- can you do something with it?"

He wasn't sure what he said to that, but Dekker was leaning in, a hand on his shoulder. "Ben, I need you to tell me the color coding for comms. Blue is water/sewer, I remember that one, and electrical is yellow, or is it red?"

Green. Green was comms on R2 and _Norway._ Might be purple here; some stations used green for the recyc stream, purple for comms.

"Got it. Green or purple. I'm going to find a relay box, okay?" Fast grin, a quick flash in the penlight's back-glow that made Dekker look years younger, like that idiot kid from back on R2. "And you can do your magic on it."

Numbers, Ben thought. Numbers were always his thing. Yeah, he could do that. Code and equations. 

But there was something important he needed to say. Ben knew numbers, and the numbers said that no good was going to come of Dekker staying here, partner or not -- the equations just didn't work out that way. There was no outcome that involved both of them getting back to _Norway._

But he didn't say it, and then Dekker was gone into the dark, and Ben couldn't quite find it in him to hope that Dekker caught a bit of common sense and didn't come back.

 

*

 

It had to be here somewhere, Dekker thought.

Sol Station wasn't built like the ring stations -- different design, more than a century removed in time -- but some things were the same, had to be the same, and Dekker had spent his childhood tagging after Ingrid Dekker in her maintenance job on Sol. He remembered the color-coded conduits that snaked through the station, the way they led to relays and switching stations for the different systems.

He didn't know much else about it, but he had to hope Ben could do something with it. Had to hope he didn't come back and find Ben bled white, like Bird ...

He'd decided a long time ago that Ben was too goddamn stubborn to die, Ben was going to outlive them all; but now he had doubts about even that. He was pissed as hell at Ben to have picked the worst of all possible times to compromise that streak of brutal self-interest that'd made Dekker so sure that Ben was the one person he could count on to not get himself killed.

But the war had fucked them all, and anyway, the point was, he'd _seen_ what Ben could do with computers, damn it. Nobody could finesse ones and zeroes like that son of a bitch.

If _Norway_ wasn't already outbound on a jump vector, leaving them here. Which Ben had a point was the most plausible outcome --

Except there were a lot of ways Captain Mallory could leap from a corner like this, and he had no idea how the situation looked on the outside. Didn't know the variables, as Ben might put it. _Norway_ could be locked in a pitched battle with Union right now, could've picked up another Fleet ship or two as backup, could be gearing ordnance to blow the station, could be ... could be doing a damn lot of things, not all of which involved jumping out on the nearest convenient vector.

He had to hope for one of the better options, because if she'd already pulled out, they were done. Fast or slow death were their only options.

Lay down and die? Like hell he would.

It was freezing down here, even worse than the docks. Maintenance tunnels weren't usually climate-controlled the same as the rest of the station, even in a place like Sol One; they could be blazing hot on the sunward side or freezing cold elsewhere. On this station, war-torn and barely tottering along even before that, the tunnels were cold enough to have him shivering again, tucking his blood-sticky hands under his arms to warm them. He'd only found one coat, a leftover stashed in an unlocked locker, and Ben had needed it more than Dekker did.

He uncovered the flashlight again, used it to check color-lines. Still following the green. Oh hey, what's this? Green panel ahead. And a phone symbol -- archaic leftover of a time when phones still looked like that.

Dekker grinned. Comms.

He tried to open the box's plastic cover and couldn't. It didn't seem twisted or damaged. Either there was an electronic lock that was useless without power, or it needed an override. He tried not to think that the entire thing might be useless with the station limping along on the dregs of emergency power. Ben would know what to do with the thing, one way or another.

And then it was a matter of retracing his steps through the dark. Clang of a door somewhere else in the maze: he froze at the sound of distant voices, the clatter of footsteps, then echoes dying away. Not close. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, until the sounds were so distant he could barely hear them, and then he went on as quietly as possible.

It was warmer near the hydroponics tanks. Ben was where Dekker had left him, crumpled in a corner, and when Dek shook Ben's shoulder he got no answer. That moment chilled him more thoroughly than the cold, cold maintenance tunnels.

"Ben," he whispered urgently. He put a hand on the side of Ben's face and patted it, then lightly smacked him. Ben's skin felt cold even to Dek's cold fingers. "Ben. C'mon. _Ben."_

It was flat terror, in that instant -- terror and fury, the same stomach-knotting terror and fury he'd felt earlier when Ben had staggered against him, almost knocking him down, with Ben's blood painting a stripe across the wall because Ben, accidentally or otherwise, had stepped in the way of a bullet with Dekker's name on it.

All Dekker knew was, he couldn't _do_ this alone, any of this; they were supposed to go together if they went, all four of them, that was what being a ridership crew _meant_ and --

\-- and then Ben came awake suddenly, jerking and blinking in the penlight's glare. Dekker sat back on his heels and let out a breath, then got hold of Ben's good arm as gently as he could, and helped him sit up.

"I found comms. Think you can help me do something with it?"

"There's no _point,_ you know that, right?" Ben ground out as Dekker helped him to his feet, keeping him up with an arm around his shoulders. "They've pulled out, they're gone, goddammit, there's no reason they'd stick around."

"Unless there are things going on out there we don't know about. And I'm not ready to surrender to Union and join their clone army yet, how about you?"

 

*

 

It was a god damn unfair turn of events to have Dekker be the steady one, Ben thought, as he leaned against the wall beside the comm panel and attempted to fumble his way one-handed through swapping wires. Dekker held the light, and held or crimped wires as Ben told him to. All they had to do this with was the multitool that Ben always carried with him in case he had to ... well ... do something like this, though mostly he used it to do things like unstick jammed shower doors and the like. Easier to do it yourself than to call Maintenance.

This would be easier in a way if Dekker would argue with him, but Dek was quiet and serious and On, about as in-the-now as Ben had ever seen him outside a ship's cockpit. He did what Ben told him, holding things and stripping wires. Ben paused occasionally to check the wiring diagram printed on the inside of the comm box's cover. He kept having to blink cold sweat out of his eyes. Shouldn't be sweating, he was goddamn _freezing_ , couldn't stop shivering ...

"You need a break?" Dekker asked.

"No," Ben said, because he was pretty sure that if he sat down now, he'd never get up again. But he blew out a breath and held onto the side of the comm box for a minute. 

There was worry written all over Dekker's face. It pissed Ben off. 

"Decided to take off yet?" he said, pulling down a handful of wires.

"Not gonna do that."

"You're not helping here. Just get over to Blue Section, see if _Norway's_ still there." He wished Dekker would just see reason on this.

"Both of us or none," Dekker said.

"Belter loyalty, huh?" Ben sneered. He tried to clip one of the wires, but his hand was shaking too much to do it one-handed. Dekker leaned in, put his hand over Ben's bloodstained fingers, helped him do it.

"I know I'm not born Belter," Dekker said. "I know I don't think the way you do. But -- hell -- I'm not going to leave you here for the azi, Ben."

"Trust me, I don't want you to, but you can move faster on your own."

Dekker's face closed off in familiar lines of belligerence, which was an expression Ben was a lot more comfortable having directed at him than the scared, mortally worried look. At least until Dekker snapped, "You took a bullet for me!"

How in the hell Dekker had managed to twist the chaos on the docks around to _that,_ Ben had no idea. All he remembered was the sharp snap of gunshots; people yelling and shoving; and that trooper, what was her name, Cathy something, giving them both a power-assisted thrust that all but threw them through a slamming vacuum door as their section of the docks decompressed.

He wondered, absently, if she was still alive.

"I sure effing didn't," he muttered, twisting wires together. "I got in the way of a bullet, that's all."

"Aimed at me."

Well, at least that explained why Dekker was acting so fucking weird toward him, all the conciliatory shit and helping him up and giving him the only coat. Guilt. It made Ben feel a little better about it to have sussed out the reason. "Yeah, fine, whatever, I'm an effing hero, throw me a parade when we're back on the _Norway_. I expect your beer ration for the next year, and conjugal visits with Meg."

There was a sound from Dekker, a choked almost-laugh. "I think you better ask Meg about that last one. Sal too."

"Strip this," Ben said, pinching a wire between shaking fingers.

Dek did, and then Ben reconnected the terminal of the emergency backup battery he'd disconnected at the start of this to avoid electrocuting himself. If he'd done what he hoped he'd done, he'd bypassed the communications conduits for the station and connected straight to the #1 broadcast antenna -- if it was still there, undamaged. If the _Norway_ was near enough to pick up.

"Is that it?" Dekker asked, and Ben realized he'd zoned out again. Goddammit.

"Sort of." He hesitated, holding the stripped wire by its insulated part, putting a message together in his head.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting interrupted by idiots."

Dekker just gave him a quick smile, the jerk. 

After a minute, Ben said, "Without the main comm net, we don't have digital. No way to hack into that system from a simple relay box like this. What we've got is analog. Which means we can't encode anything, not properly. You remember any Morse code?"

"Some," Dekker said. You needed it for a pilot's license, back on R2.

"Yeah. Let's hope Union doesn't."

He got it straight in his head and tapped out a message. Nothing fancy, just their names and a rendezvous point on ... god, don't think about getting to it ... Blue Section. Then he leaned on the comm box and pressed a fist into his forehead and tried to think of anything he hadn't already thought of that'd bite them in the ass later.

"Ben," Dekker said quietly.

"Not now," Ben snapped.

_"Ben."_

There was tense urgency in Dekker's voice. Ben raised his head, just as lights snapped on all around them, blinding after the darkness. Flashlights and guns, bristling on all sides.

"Shit," Ben muttered. "Guess we aren't gonna make that rendezvous after all." He was vaguely aware of Dekker moving between him and what had to be a Union patrol, but mostly he had other concerns, namely that his legs had stopped holding him up, and he slid to the floor.

 

*

 

Dekker managed to catch Ben as he fell, sort of, and ended up on the floor with Ben half in his lap and guns all around them.

Azi, he thought, looking up at the ring of repeating faces. There were only three or four variations in the group. All those faces, all the same.

... but not, Dekker couldn't help noticing, the same expressions. Some faces were blank, might as well have been robots. But some were frowning slightly, some looked curious, some looked bored.

He didn't want to see human expressions on azi. Screwed you to hell, thinking that way. You had to just think about them as ... well ... as numbers, as Ben would put it. Green lines in the dark. And he _knew_ there were real people over there on Union ships, but mostly it was azi, who might as well be machines -- or so everyone said.

But then, he didn't know anyone who'd come face to face with them before.

"Get up," the azi wearing command insignia said. His voice was perfectly calm and polite. "And come with us."

Dekker tightened his grip on Ben. "My friend can't walk."

"Get up and come with us, or you will be shot."

A chill rippled down his back. There was something even worse about the threat when it was delivered in a tone that was so level and unbothered, like putting in your order at a bar.

"Just a minute, I'll get him up," Dekker said. The azi stayed back and gave him room. He hauled Ben up, slung Ben's arm over his shoulders. Ben was conscious, but barely.

Caught by Union. Shit shit shit. He couldn't get over how quietly the azi had come upon them, lights off in the dark, until they were surrounded. It was eerie, too, seeing the polite calm in the azi squad, with no talking among themselves, and not even a little gesture of pettiness, a push or a curse at their prisoners.

You wouldn't want needless brutality in an army trained on tape, Dekker thought numbly. It could turn back on their creators. You just wanted this: firm politeness, but not a hint of mercy, no slowing down for a man who could barely stand up as they were herded down dark corridors toward God Knows. He kept an arm around Ben, holding him and hauling him along by main strength as Ben's legs wobbled until he wound a hand in the back of Dekker's flight harness.

A door clanged open onto light and they stepped out into the echoing space of the docks. After the chill of the tunnels, the docks no longer felt as cold as they had. Or maybe it was adrenaline coursing through him, making his heart thump -- with no outlet, nothing he could do to change their fates.

"Sit there," the azi commander said. Dekker gave half a thought to trying to tackle him and take his gun away, but he couldn't do it with Ben tangled up with him, and hell, he'd probably just get shot himself. So he sat on the bare metal, pulling Ben down with him.

Ben was almost completely out of it. He leaned on Dekker's shoulder, shivering, good hand tangled in the back of Dekker's flight harness like he was afraid of being separated.

Valid fear, under the circumstances. Dekker kept an arm around him, aware of Union on all sides, mostly azi; aware there was nothing he could do to stop them from being separated, taken away, brainwashed and sent back to fight on the other side, or whatever Union did with captured prisoners. He'd heard a lot of rumors. None of them were anything good.

He was shaking himself now, partly from cold and partly from fear. He'd hung onto sanity by his fingernails at times, but crazy as he knew he was, his brain was still his; every corner of his fractured mind was his own. The idea of Union crawling around in there made him sick. Death would be better.

He could throw himself on one of the azi. Get a gun, take out some of them, go down fighting. It beat the alternative.

Ben muttered against his shoulder, "Planning something stupid, Moonbeam?"

Sometimes he wondered how in the hell Ben _did_ that. "No stupider than being taken back to Cyteen and having our brains pulled out of our heads."

"Give you a look at Cyteen tape-training up close. Compare it to the sims ..."

"It's not funny!"

"No," Ben admitted. "No, it's not." He made sound somewhere between a choked laugh and a quiet sigh, and relaxed on Dekker's shoulder. Dekker had to look down quickly to check if he'd passed out, or -- like Bird, he thought, sickened. Too much like Bird. 

But Ben was still breathing, though he had his eyes half closed, leaning on Dekker and gazing blankly into nothingness. 

Together or not at all. Hell.

This was a stupid way for all of this to end, Dekker thought, looking up at the azi around them. Not _at all_ what he had in mind when he went out to the Belt. But he would've gotten drafted on Sol One if he'd stayed anyway; it was all coming to this, one way or another. And he hadn't cared as long as he got to fly.

Ben, though ...

Ben, on his own, had found a way out. Ben would've set himself up in a cushy office back in Sol System. Safe.

"I'm sorry, Ben," he said quietly.

He didn't think Ben heard him, then there was a huff of a laugh, a breathy whisper. "You're one goddamn sorry sumbitch all right, Dekker. What are you sorry for now?"

"Getting you into this. All of this."

There was a long silence, then: "Don't you be sorry at me about that, you dumb effing rock jock. You think I couldn't have gotten myself out of it anytime if I really wanted to?"

Had never really thought about it that way. Fleet had been a trap that had closed its jaws around them so neatly they couldn't get out even if they wanted to. Dekker and Meg were snared with the promise of flight, and Sal went wherever Meg went, and Ben ...

Ben had been trapped by Dekker's bad decisions, was what had happened, but this was the first time Dekker realized -- really, consciously realized -- that Ben might not have stayed on just because of that. Maybe it was Ben's own ego talking; maybe Ben let himself believe he could walk out anytime because it was better than admitting he was as trapped as the rest of them. But in a way it almost didn't matter if it was true or not; what mattered was that Ben believed it, what mattered was that he hadn't tried to get out, that he didn't want it bad enough to do it.

That he was here with them because he wanted to be.

Ben seemed to have passed out on his shoulder. Dekker leaned his head against Ben's and closed his eyes against the sight of the azi and their guns, and thought maybe he'd just stay like this for a few minutes, and if they shot him, hell with it.

And then something exploded.

Dekker's eyes snapped open and he looked around. There was smoke coming in from somewhere, a section seal blown -- not to vacuum, but to the intact section next door -- and armored troopers pouring in. The azi looked baffled, looking around for someone to give them instructions.

"Ben. Ben, c'mon."

His main thought was just to get to cover before someone thought of using them as hostages. But then the troopers were there, the azi were scattering in disarray, and Dekker was half-covering Ben with his own body because he somehow, stupidly, couldn't figure out if this was their side or the other, until a gauntleted hand reached down to him and a suit-magnified voice said, "Pollard and Dekker?"

"Yeah -- damn -- Abrams, is that you?" 

The trooper scooped up Ben, carrying him effortlessly in the suit's hydraulic-boosted arms. "Come on, this way. We got a ride for you. _Norway's_ not at dock, she's out a bit."

It wasn't just a rescue for them, Dekker noted as they joined a small knot of people clustered around one of the berths -- it was stationers and a handful of other _Norway_ personnel, mostly injured. Dekker saw Cathy Rosenstein among them, out of her power armor and gripping a visibly broken arm, and pushed through to pat her shoulder. "Thanks for earlier," he said, and she nodded, white-faced with pain.

The airlock cycled. Dek wasn't sure what to expect on the other side, but they spilled out into the cargo hold of a small ore pusher, probably one of the station's, and in the pilot's seat --

"Jeune rab, are you a sight for sore eyes," Meg said, grinning at him. "Wasn't sure you were alive 'til we got your message." Her grin faltered then at the sight of the blood, and Ben.

"The hell are you doing here?" Dek wanted to know, getting a grip on Ben and another on the take-holds along the inside of the pusher's bay.

"Some greeting, that," said another familiar voice on his other side, and he was somehow unsurprised when Sal appeared out of nowhere, flight suit and all, and took Ben away from him.

"Sorry. I'm glad to see you. Both of you. You don't know how glad. But I thought you were on _Norway_ \--"

"Needed a pilot, cher," Meg told him. "One who'd flown pushers. Think you'll find a lot of _those_ on a carrier, huh?"

"Stop talking, get the rest of these stationer slowpokes in!" Sal snapped. She had an arm around Ben, another hooked through the take-hold. There was blood everywhere, on Ben, on Dekker, on her.

"Need help?" Dekker asked the troopers, but one of them snapped "Stay out of the way!" so he hunkered down beside Sal instead.

"God," Sal muttered, running a hand through Ben's hair and then resting her hand on his cheek. Ben's face was gray, eyes closed; Dek knew he was alive only because he'd seen dead, with Bird, and this wasn't it. "Any of this your blood, Dek?"

"It's all his. I'm not hurt." Though he was shivering now, shivering so hard he could barely keep his grip on the take-hold. Teeth chattering. It wasn't cold; it was adrenaline drop. He recognized it, but he'd never had it this bad. "How's it going out there?"

"We got backup. _Australia_ and _India_ jumped in, must have been just after you two went off-grid. They're not here yet, still pulsing down, but Union's on the run. They know they can't take three carriers --"

"Pushing off!" Meg called back. "Grab on!"

The airlock disengaged with a thump. The ship tumbled free; acceleration pressed Dekker to the bulkhead. Sal held Ben in place with her body. And Dekker clung to the take-hold, and closed his eyes.

 

*

 

 _Norway's_ sickbay was a place Ben had seen little of -- by _design_ , thank you, not being a trouble magnet like some people he could name. On the heels of a battle, it was full up with people in worse shape than he was. So he didn't see much of it this time, either. They patched him, gave him a bag of plasma and some heavy-duty painkillers _thank you finally_ , and then sent him back to quarters. Which wasn't a bad thing; he got a familiar bed in familiar surroundings, getting fussed over by two fine-looking women, and even Dekker being slightly less Dekker than usual.

Other good news: they weren't jumping out right away, which meant he didn't have to go through trank and jump after being shot; he'd heard plenty of stories about what _that_ was like, please and thank you.

As for what was going on out there ... all you heard down here was rumors, nothing concrete, just snatches that trickled in on the grapevine. Talk of Union prisoners, talk of azi mass-suicides -- who knew what was real. All anybody really knew was that two other carriers were out there, and looked like they were going to be in-system for a bit. By this point in the war, a man knew when to keep his head down and take the reprieve for the gift it was.

Having Sal sit by his bed and pet his hair wasn't a thing to complain about, either.

"Graff had a lot to do with it, you know," Meg said. "-- us not pulling out with you still on the station. What I heard, anyway."

"Rumors," Sal scoffed. "Up on command deck, they don't make decisions that way. Always three reasons why anyone up there does anything, and two of 'em are the good of the ship and one is orders from Fleet, so."

Dek started arguing about that, of course, and Ben had Opinions of his own on that topic, but was too tired to say anything. He let it wash over him, relaxing into the feel of Sal's fingers in his hair.

"Man's asleep," Sal murmured. "How about we take this outside?"

Things got quiet then for awhile, and he was aware a little later of Sal crawling into the bed with him, and dimly aware later yet of her crawling out. A little while after that, he woke up enough to realize that his arm was hurting again and a check of the time let him know he wasn't due for another painkiller for hours, despite the bottle of pills and water that had been thoughtfully left beside the bed. And he needed to use the head.

It was very quiet, aside from the usual background noise of the ship. A light was on in the common room of their suite, but he assumed everyone was asleep, Sal maybe sleeping out there so as not to bother him.

He lurched out in his underwear and found Dekker reading on the couch. Hooray. Dekker gave a little wave; Ben ignored him and stumbled into the head.

"Where is everybody?" he asked when he came out.

"Girls went out," Dekker said. "Up to the rec lounge for a beer. Taking advantage of the stand-down."

"And you got the short straw, or what?"

Dekker shrugged and paged his reader with a fingertip-swipe.

Ben wanted to go back to bed, but knew he wouldn't be able to sleep without more painkillers. It beat staying out here though, so he stretched out on his bunk and paged up a vid on his reader.

Dekker showed up in the doorway a few minutes later. "Hey ... Ben ... you awake?"

"No," Ben said.

"I wanted to ask you about ... no ..." Dekker took a breath. "You know, I think maybe I don't want to know."

No good ever came of a conversational opening like that. Ben glanced up after a minute, found him still there, unfortunately. "You got a question or not?"

"No. I think I know the answer anyway." And hopefully that would be that, but instead Dekker sat down in the doorway, one leg stretched out. "Get you anything? Food maybe?"

Dekker being this nice to him was downright eerie. "Not hungry." He tapped his reader. "Busy."

"Okay, yeah," Dekker said, but he just stayed there, leaned against the doorway, and after awhile, bent his head over his own reader again.

It should have grated, having him there, but it didn't; it was always stranger and more alien to be alone, after a lifetime spent in close quarters where people lived on top of each other. And Ben had gotten used to these three specific people, over the past few years.

Not that he _wanted_ to be stuck on a carrier in a war zone, getting shot at.

But hell. Stuff happened back on Earth, too. Being planetside, down in a gravity well ... now _that_ was dangerous. Earthquakes. Weather. Wild animals. Didn't know how the human species survived long enough to go to space, anyway. He wondered if anybody had ever calculated the odds on _that._

Numbers didn't lie, but sometimes long odds could still come through. And there were worse places to be than where he was. Not that he planned to admit it.


End file.
